"What is the size of your best houses? What size are the rooms, and how many to a house? Size of single houses? Is there attached to your houses or on the colliery any private accommodation? Are there any channels or underground sewers to take away the dirty water and other refuse made in the houses? Are the houses damp and incompatible with health, or dry and healthy? Are there many of the members who have houses of their own? What number of double and single houses have you? Have you a good or bad supply of water and whence supplied? What is your school accommodation, national or colliery? Have you a Mechanics' Institute? Is it colliery or private property? Are there any gardens to the houses?" On Saturday, November 7th, the owners made a claim for a reduction from all the men at bank. This was before the Executive Committee. They by resolution expressed their surprise, and their opinion that they had not been treated fairly, as the employers ought to have dealt with the classes now to be affected in the arbitration just concluded. They considered that "such a mode of procedure cannot but have an injurious effect on that good and desirable understanding which has so long existed between the two Associations." The owners gave the surface men notice to terminate their engagement on 12th December. A special Council meeting was called. The questions to be decided were--first, should the Miners' Committee act for the cokemen, seeing those men were forming an association of their own, and over two-thirds of that class had joined it? Of the other classes three questions were asked: "Ought these men to follow Russell Gurney's award? Ought the reduction to be resisted or ought arbitration to be sought?" The Council decided on Saturday, December 5th, that the Cokemen's Association meet the employers themselves, but "that the members of the Joint Committee should meet them on the banksmen, screeners, labourers, etc." The arrangement come to by the Joint Committee was: "The banking-out men having been generally classed with the underground men, should in all cases be dealt with strictly according to the terms of Mr Gurney's award, that is, remain 30 per cent. in excess of March 1871 and it was recommended that the case of men earning less than 3s. per diem be left to the consideration of individual owners." There are two matters not dealt with in the general statement of this year. These are the appointment of Mr Forman as permanent president on 2nd May and the appointment of the first clerk. The first was Mr A. Hall Shotton; but his stay was short, and he was succeeded by Mr W. Golightly, who was in the office for over thirty-one years. [Illustration: W. GOLIGHTLY] 1875 The third Reduction--Co-operative Colliery--The demand for better Houses--The fourth Reduction